This always happens to me at work! All of the sudden it will just get super quiet and I will be to hear the music they play over the speakers loud and clear. I am pretty sure it is the air conditioning or something turning off, but I never even notice the sound until it’s no longer there! Such a beautiful feeling.

I use a fan for white noise when I sleep because I have tinnitus. White noise is way less annoying than ringing in your ears.

I can’t use white noise machines, though. They all seem to have some kind of pattern and/or loop, and once I pick up on it, it becomes annoying because I pay attention to it instead of letting it recede into the background. And it keeps me awake!

I can relate to Monk in so many ways. Half an octave is a big difference! ;)

I’ve had tinnitus from sustained head injuries, for most of my life. Recently, it reached a higher octive and there’s a deep burn with pain; I see an ENT next week, and can only hope if it’s same as Neil’s friend Joey, for the same results.
Anyway, for anyone who may be in need or interested, I was told by my trusted team to get a sound generator and visit brainsync.com where there are some downloads by Kelly Powell, for relief…which I’ll be doing real soon!
And so in case you ever wondered, now you all know, when I am seemingly coo-coo-ca-choo, I appreciate policing, humour and understanding, because it’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just the inflammation in my head:)
Thanks for listening with your lovely ears. Peace out.

Yikes. Mine isn’t nearly that bad. I don’t usually hear any ringing unless the ambient noise is low. I do get headaches a lot but they’re probably for other reasons. Good luck with your ENT appointment!

THANK YOU for your kind words.
It’s been recently discovered tinnitus is neurological, which is not always cause for alarm, just might want to look at holistitic approaches to the inflammation because this can go hand-in-hand with the head aches…I am far too familiar with. So much that I even experience sight loss at times.
brainsync.com even have some healing tools by Kelly Power, I’ve heard are top of the line effective.
And since I’ve discovered this awesome web site, I’ve had some better quality of life too for sure!

“By the sounds of it”, (wry humour), you’d not like it; not one little bit!
Easiest description is this: sound in one or both ears such as buzzing, ringing, whirring or whistling, at times accompanied by snaps, crackles and pops…
not so gentle as rice krispees, nostalgic as an old LP or as pretty as flying turtles.
I know, I know…and live by way of a lot of gratitdue…things could always be worse.
Thank you for your thoughts.

That is one of my fave xkcd comics because I totally started doing this after a voice came out of the ceiling at work one day, saying “Don’t touch the computer screen” at a certain coffee chain I used to work for. Turns out the security cameras are linked to headquarters and they watch that shit. In our case, we had a glitch in the system and they were fixing it remotely, but damn that was creepy. From then on out, I just had to assume they watched all the time for entertainment and I started doing weird things in front of the cameras just to mess with them, like freezing in place to make them think the cameras stopped working.

When my old clunky washing machine finishes the fast spin cycle, it literally jumps about making loud clunking sounds, like a helicopter has crash-landed in the laundry room. Every so often I have to shove it back into its proper spot, as it travels forward a bit with every wash load.

Reminds me of that one Sears commercial where the couple is buying a new washer and they flashback to their old washer and its overflowing and dancing across the laundry room while the couple is trying to hold it steady and at the end of the commercial, the man kicks the old washer as Sears hauls it away.
I tried looking for it on YouTube, but I couldn’t find it.

Bekah, I saw that one very recently-hilarious! I tried to re-pay you for flying turtles but couldn’t locate either.
Jen325, will definately pass this solution to my daughter; have tried everything and their stacker is wild!
Whoa…wrote the 2,2,2 and then scrolled up…whoa, far out eh!

I always crack up at the commercial where the old couple is looking at a museum display, and the woman turns to the man and says “Isn’t that OUR washer?” For some reason I have an involuntary fit of laughter at that.

I never knew why they called it a “white noise” to begin with..lol IBut Bekah–I can totally relate to the refrigerator hum. Our old refreigerator (an innovation of the 1980’s!) was so loud! In fact, we never realized how loud it was until we recently replaced with our newer (made in 2010 fridge) and saw how quiet things became all of a sudden! Silence IS truly golden! lol

Oh, you know what always bugged me, which fortunately is not as big a problem as it used to be? The TV sound! You know, that high-pitched barely-audible sound older TVs and CRT monitors make when they’re on? Thank goodness technology has stomped that out. ;)

Haha…”is”. I heard up to level 5, but I’m in a pretty noisy environment so I don’t know if I’d be able to hear higher ones. I can say that I hear those sonic vermin repellers that they claim human’s can’t hear (or at least I could 10 years ago; haven’t been around one since). I worked in a place that had a mouse problem, and they put one in. It drove me crazy, but everyone else was 16+ years older than me and couldn’t hear a thing. It took weeks of constant complaning before they got rid of it.

I also heard up to level 5. After that I couldn’t tell if it was my computer just making a noise or if it was the test. That and the sound was coming from under my desk, so I had to stick my head under there to listen. I bet I looked kinda funny doing it too.

This is so true! My neighbours have the loudest air conditioning unit ever created (conveniently placed on the side of their house that’s right up against our back yard) and they seem to have it on every day, dawn to dusk, from May to October. Any time we’re eating dinner outside or watching TV with the window open, it’s always there underlying everything else until, suddenly, it’s gone and we can hear the world properly again. Ahhhhhh.

Same here, except I can hear it with all my windows closed and the TV on. So annoying. It even turned on a couple times in February this year when it was like 60 degrees out. I imagine they are keeping penguins in there.

SO true! There’s a Beatles’ song called “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, and it has white noise, and the first time I heard it, I didn’t even realize it until the song ended abruptly.
Also applies to the time I slept in a cabin and the tree frogs were calling to one another. It drowned out after a while, but I wasn’t paying it any attention . . . that is, until they stopped at 3 in the morning when I was getting water.

I was driving to the beach one day, a little too quickly. I got pulled over by a county sheriff, and he wrote me a ticket, but because it was my first time he reduced the amount! As we arrived at the beach and walked out from the beach access, I couldn’t understand what was so different at the beach. Then I realized there was no waves -the noise of washing and crashing waves was absent, it was completely silent! And whoa was it awesome.